-The mere act of reading, the mere act of it teaches discipline, persistence, consistency.

Broadens the vocabulary.

The more words you have, the less violent you need to be.

It teaches you how to listen to yourself, and it keeps your imagination stoked, which is to say that literacy is important because it is the very thing that could -- that keeps us free.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm curious about where you grew up, I wonder.

I grew up in East Flatbush and Brownsville, and there were certain smells and sounds and daily goings-on in the neighborhood.

And also, I feel like growing up in the '80s, especially in most neighborhoods, especially in Black neighborhoods, you know, we were out in the street all day long.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-So what were some of those sounds and smells?

-Outside babies, first and foremost, we were -- we were outside.

You opened the door.

My mom opened the door at 9:00 in the morning and that's it.

Like, go outside and it's like, and do what?

Don't matter.

But, you know, and without cellphones, without any of the things that we have now to monitor the whereabouts of children.

We were just outside on our own and expected to just be home before it was dark, right?

Street light -- Street light rules, right?

But Mom has no idea what we're doing or where we are, and apparently it didn't really matter that much to her.

And that time it wasn't -- it wasn't like it is now.

Some of the sounds and the smells -- You know, I had, you know, first of all, we start with in the house, right?

So I come from this Black household where my mom was a Southern woman.

So, you know, on Sunday mornings you had gospel music playing, you know, on Saturday mornings, you know, it was -- it's the same thing as it is with so many of us.

You play Anita Baker because we got to clean the house, right?

On Friday nights, my mom played funk music on the radio.

My father was very different.

It was different.

So when we got in his car, it was all like rock 'n' roll, right?

We were listening to Hendrix and we were listening to Bruce.

He loved '80s pop rock, right?

So we're listening to Hall & Oates.

Uh, Phil Collins, right?

And that was sort of another sound that we heard.

We also heard my father and my next-door neighbors two houses down, um, Sidani and Hassan, some of my father's friends' sons, basically.

They were all like gearheads, right?

So they're all outside fixing cars.

My father was a mechanic kind of guy, right?

So they're fixing cars and you're hearing the sounds of -- of -- of the ratchet clicking.

You're hearing, um, them trying to start a car that won't turn over.

You're hearing beer bottles, you're hearing, uh, lots of cussing and, you know, just -- just noise and -- and on the other side, the preacher, it was very different, right?

Because there wasn't any of that.

It was more sort of like the gospel music of him going to church on Sundays and packing up all of his children to get there, and things of that nature.

You had to deal with ambulances.

People on my block were also -- you know, I had my neighbors die of AIDS during this time.

This is the '80s and early '90s, right?

People are dying of AIDS, and that's happening.

And so we're seeing ambulances.

We're seeing, um... You know, you're dealing with all of that stuff too.

You're dealing with cop cars, uh, because of break-ins and things of that nature as well.

Uh, dogs barking.

Everybody -- In the '80s, everybody had a dog and most people had outside dogs.

This is a very different time now, right?

Back then your dog was on the outside.

Your dog was in a doghouse, right?

And your dog -- you know, if you lived in those kind of neighborhoods, it was like your dog ain't coming inside.

And so a lot of dog barking all night, all the time, right?

Just because people had outside dogs.

Or you hear -- you hear, um, telephone cords, long telephone cords, the straight ones from back in the day.

We would use those to Double Dutch, right, to jump rope.

And so you'd hear the skipping of the ropes, right?

You'd hear the sounds of roller skates, the wheels of roller skates on the asphalt, right?

Like all of those things are the sounds of -- like the soundscape of my childhood.

Ice cream trucks, of course.

-You describe what street life was like in Oxon Hill.

What was home life like?

-My home life was... Honestly, it was so cool.

This is another thing that sort of comes into clearer view as you get older.

As I've gotten older.

I realize now that I was growing up in a household with... ...with an uncanny amount of freedom that my mother -- my parents were together for the first 10 years, and they modeled love in a really specific and, uh, and vibrant way.

My parents -- My father was very affectionate.

They were -- They were very -- They were a touchy-feely couple, which as a kid, it's so gross.

As an adult, though, I know what love looks like.

I know what it's supposed to feel like.

Um, and so, and even when my parents broke up and divorced, they still were good friends.

And so I also got to see what love looks like when the circumstance changes.

They still loved each other, but just the conditions were different, right?

And I got to see what that looked like as well, um, in that house.

The other thing was we -- My mom was all about open channels of communication.

So she had rough days, right?

There were some days that were sticky for us, of course, because she's a person, she's a human.

And she was carrying a lot of weight, trying to make sure that everything stayed afloat, that me and my older brother, that everybody was safe, that we -- that the streets hadn't done what it does to so many Black boys that -- but also that we were -- that we were testing our boundaries, that we were pushing the line a little bit.

She understood that that was a part of our maturation and made space for it.

She made space for us to say anything we wanted to say.

I never had to worry about hiding and lying.

I never had to like -- I could just say like, "Hey, you know, I'm -- I'm -- I'm interested in these things" or "I want to do this" or "I want to try this" or "What does this mean?"

or "I'm afraid of these things" or, you know, "I like this girl."

Can you -- I remember this one time, you know, and this is -- this will give you a good -- a good glimpse of who she was.

I remember being in the 10th grade or 11th grade and I had this girlfriend.

We really were just dating.

We weren't like -- But we were dating and I liked her a lot.

Um, and it was Valentine's Day and I was like, "Ma, like, I need, like, I need to do this right.

I need to, like, impress this girl."

Right?

It's snowing.

I'll never forget it was snow on the ground.

And my mom was like, "Cool."

Like, "I'm gonna tell you what to do," right?

She was like, "You go to the store.

We're gonna go get you a Stouffer's lasagna."

I'll never forget this because I was like, "Ma, you got to help me."

Like, I got to make like, a nice dinner, you know what I mean?

"We're gonna go to the store, get you some Stouffer's lasagna.

We're gonna cook the lasagna.

Then we're gonna take it out the tin, and we're gonna put it in a pan as if you made this, right?

And then you're gonna pull it out the oven when she get here, and you're gonna cut it, and you're gonna serve it right."

And then on top of all of this, my mom was like, "And I'm gonna not -- I'm gonna leave the house.

I'm gonna give you this space for your romantic time.

I'm gonna allow for you to, like, learn how to do this because you're going to need to know how to do this, right, how to treat someone that you care for and how to be... Uh, I think romantic is a cheap word.

I think it diminishes what -- I think what she was trying to teach me was how to be thoughtful, um, how to be intentional, uh, and how to put forth effort even when you may lack resource or talent, right?

It was like, you might not know how to cook lasagna, but we finna work around that and it's going to be good.

It's going to taste good.

And she might know the difference.

She might not, but she'll appreciate the effort.

And it was an amazing night, right?

And that's who she was.

It was always like, how do I give my kids the edge?

How do I teach them how to move through the world, how to see the world and view it, right?

How do I teach them sort of how to change, uh, bits of it that they want to change?

How do I give them, um, a heightened sense of discernment while also giving them the wings to be unafraid?

-One of the reasons you can stand 10 toes deep nowadays is because you sit on the shoulders of Isabell Reynolds.

-Absolutely.

-Tell me about your mom.

-You know, Isabell Reynolds is, um, to me, for a woman coming up in her time, a revolutionary, a maverick.

She says it's about her mother.

But when I look at my mom, I look at her and I'm like, yo, you really did some special things.

You know, this is a woman 15 years -- She graduates from high school early.

First of all, she's from the mud, right?

From rural South Carolina.

They moved to D.C.

when she was 10 years old.

And the D.C.

school system does everything they can to keep her back because of her -- of an accent, right?

They looked at her accent as if it was a symbol for ignorance, as if she could not know, uh, she could not keep up with the rigor of a city education.

My mom was being taught in one-room schoolhouses.

And, like, you know, my mom was going to school with her older sister because they had to go somewhere.

So your big sister going to school, it ain't time for you to go to school, but go with her because you got to go.

We gonna be in the field.

Somebody's got to watch after you.

So go with your older sister.

Right?

And so she was able to be in school earlier than usual, gets to D.C., gets challenged, and her mother is like, "Let her test."

Let her test and then ends up graduating early, right?

And so she gets to D.C., she graduates early, she takes a job 15, 16 years old, working in the mailroom of this insurance -- this insurance policy place and works her way up, you know, goes to the March on Washington and realizes that like -- oh, she's 16, goes to the March on Washington and realizes, "Oh, this moment being here, uh, has catalyzed me.

And I now know I will not stay in the mailroom."

Before that, she wasn't sure.

Women didn't have a lot of opportunity.

Black women had even less.

Right?

Either you were going to be a secretary or teacher, or you're going to work in the mailroom.

And my mom was like, "Mm.

After witnessing what I've just witnessed, I'm not -- I know -- I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm not going to stay in this mailroom."

Took her 12 years to get a bachelor's degree, got a bachelor's degree in education while working every single day and going to school one class at a time and doing it the hard way.

The first person in our family to get a degree, even after taking 12 years to do so, right?

She ends up working her way up the ladder to the supervisor position.

Right?

Was the first Black person and the first Black woman to hold that position.

Now, while doing all of this as a super professional woman, she would then come home and, like, have a whole separate part of herself, right?

It's like, alright, now in the house, it's gonna be meditation.

It's gonna be, you know, palm reading.

It's gonna be -- Right?

We got crystals, we got, you know, I always laugh because these days, all of this is so, so in vogue, right?

Everybody's got like, you know, every woman I know is like, "Oh, yeah, I got -- I got my crystals, I got -- it's gonna be a full moon and I got to do --" right?

-- all this stuff," right?

I got my incense, I got my Nag Champa, I got my palo santo, I got my white sage, right?

And this is the stuff I grew up in the house with, right?

My mom was an herbalist.

You open up the cabinets and it's just like all kind of flowers, tree barks and all this stuff because she didn't believe in -- she believed in like naturalism and was like, look, we gonna make a stew or I can make a tea that's gonna knock that right out, right?

She had all these books like "Back to Eden" and all these sort of like books of the occult that we grew up around, um, and that were very normal and real for us.

Now I realize just how special that was.

How cool it was to live in a house where things were being done differently.

How cool it was to be around somebody who really carved their own path when it came to spiritual practices, when it came to parental practices.

Right?

She really was just on her own wave and in her own bag.

And still she's like, you know, I've been thinking about this, that and the third or, you know, I got new thoughts on the afterlife, if it's a thing or, you know, I've been thinking about learning this new thing, right?

And I am inspired because I know that as I age, I want to be a person who is constantly unfolding myself.

And that's what she's done.

She's constantly peeled back layer after layer after layer, every year, every decade, a new layer, um, and something fresh being exposed underneath that even as she's entering into the winter of her life.

-Yeah.

I mean, I know it's not all peaches and cream, but it sounds like the environment that you grew up in was like an incubator for free speech, for the learning, unconditional love, you know?

And that just -- that's the seeds that births empathy and compassion in individuals.

Would you say that your mom is your North Star?

-I would say my mom is definitely my -- my -- my North Star.

And I would also say my father, he's not too far behind.

You know, I think -- I don't talk about him as much because there was a gap in our relationship.

Right?

But I could -- I hit the parental jackpot, like the coolest parents, you know, God bless the dead.

He's no longer with us, but I -- He was different, man.

They were different.

My dad, I mean, I grew up with the bad-boy father, like in the '80s and '90s.

And so, like, the bad-boy father today looks just like me.

The bad-boy father in the '80s and '90s, we're talking about a man who was, like, outside and like, tight jeans and a T-shirt, a ripped T-shirt, covered in tattoos, aviator sunglasses on.

You know what I mean?

Always like a cigar in his mouth or something like that.

Motorcycles, calendars of women in the gara-- And like -- just he was a wild guy, right?

And was the coolest person in the world, right?

Would wake me up in the middle of the night and be like, "Hey, come on."

My older brother asleep, my mama asleep.

Come on, come on, come on.

We go outside and he start up the motorcycle.

Harley-Davidson, right?

Loudest motorcycle on the planet.

And he was like, "Watch this."

He'd start the motorcycle up, throw me on the back of it.

And we would ride around the neighborhood.

You would see the lights turning on, everybody waking up upset, right?

And he loved it just to do it, right?

Or like he -- It was homecoming one time.

He was like, "Yo, I'm gonna take you.

I'm gonna take you."

Gave me this amazing -- I still have it -- Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket, right?

Like put this on, put this on, put these boots on.

Right?

And then we pulled up on the back of the Harley to homecoming, right?

And it's like -- He made me cool, right?

And so I think my mom -- I always say my mom is who taught me how to view the world, how to view life.

Right?

She gave me the perspective, right?

My father is really, really who taught me as I got older, who taught me how to move through the world.

Right?

He taught me like charisma.

He taught me, uh... I feel like he gave me magnetism in a particular way because he was one of those guys, right?

He walked in the room.

Temperature changes.

He ain't got to say nothing, right?

That kind of like -- He had like a thing that I think, uh, hopefully, I think is what I have.

My mom doesn't necessarily have that per se.

She has a presence, but it's a very different kind of presence.

She has the presence where it's like, she must be important.

But like, I might not want to talk to her yet.

My dad had a presence was like, I don't know who he is, but I definitely need to know.

Right?

[ Laughs ] -What was school like for you growing up?

Did you excel?

Did you struggle?

-You know what?

I was good until middle school.

I skipped second grade.

I was super -- I was starting off.

I mean, I was -- I was fresh out the gate.

I came out the gate like I'm rocking and rolling.

And that's just because of the way my parents treated me in the household, you know what I mean?

We were having whole conversations and I wasn't babied very much.

It was just sort of like, hey, you know, these are the things we're expected to do.

This is how we talk to you.

This is, you know -- My neighbors were all -- It was -- I don't know, I was more like a little man.

They sat me at the table with everybody.

I didn't have no highchair.

Right?

Gonna sit Jason right here with the rest of us.

And I would just sit and listen and observe and watch.

I had a little rocking chair.

My mom would be in the kitchen cooking, and I would sit right at the door and my rocking chair and just observe, right?

Like I was sort of always a bit older.

Um, and so elementary school seemed like a breeze.

I felt like I was too old to be there.

Right?

And so they moved me forward to third, which put me two years behind everybody because I have a late birthday.

Um, and so everything is fine until it's time for middle school.

Now, when middle school comes, my parents split, so everything happens at the same time.

Grandma dies, parents split, all that kind of stuff is, you know -- I'm starting to write poetry.

Right?

All of this is happening simultaneously.

And I'm going to this new school because my mom -- then my dad was gone.

My neighborhood school was terrible.

So she sends me to Catholic school.

Man!

Culture shock, man.

I got to wear a uniform.

I hate -- I was away from my friends.

I was away from my neighborhood.

It was -- It was terrible.

Right?

I'm 10 years old.

I'm two years younger than everybody else, so I'm tiny.

And, uh, I immediately started to do poorly.

And, you know, my first D's are coming in -- D in science, D in -- Right?

I'm upset about my parents' situation.

And then after that, I began to be manipulative because I knew I could.

It's a good excuse.

Right?

I was like -- I'm going, "My parents are breaking up."

Right?

Meanwhile, I'm just like not doing anything.

And all of my report cards say the same thing, right?

He's not living up to one's potential, right?

It's that kind of thing.

Uh, which I have some -- I mean, for me, it's like, yeah, that's true.

But also I'm not sure my teachers were living up to their potential either.

And the ones that were I performed for.

-Tell me about some of those that pushed you.

-Mr.

Williams my senior year.

He taught a class called Global Studies.

And I really -- I always say, you know, Mr.

Williams taught me how to be a person.

He was almost like the glue between my parents.

It was like, alright.

My father gave me these things.

My mother gave me these things.

My friends gave me sort of a force field, right, to be safe and creative in myself.

But Mr.

Williams, at the time in which he came into my life, he gave me just this little bit of like tether.

It's like a little bit of glue that kind of makes all of this stuff work, right?

There was one day we came to class, Mr.

Williams says, "I have a fish that I bought for you all.

It's going to be a class pet."

But we're all seniors, so of course we're like, "Bro, we grown.

Like, who cares?"

And he puts it in this tank, in this aquarium.

He says, "Listen, you can feed the fish every day when you come to class.

I need you to name the fish.

Now, the only rule is you can't touch the fish, right?

Now, if I see you with your hands in the tank for any reason, and if for any reason your fingers or anything grazes the fish, don't try to lift it up out of the tank.

Don't play around with it.

Right?

And if I see you do that, then I'm going to suspend you.

That's it.

Right?

You're gonna be in trouble."

Cool.

Time passes, and we're feeding the fish every day.

And one day we come to class, and Mr.

Williams takes the fish out of the tank and puts it on the floor.

We all gather around.

we're confused and mortified as the fish is flopping and flapping and gasping for air.

And finally, two young ladies run over.

They pick the fish up and they throw the fish back in the tank and save the fish's life.

And Mr.

Williams says, um, "Grab your backpacks and head on down to the principal's office.

You're suspended.

The rules are the rules, right?"

Of course they're upset.

We're upset.

Everyone's upset.

And he's like, I told you that if you touch the fish, you'll be suspended.

I told you this was non-negotiable, and you touched the fish.

And so unfortunately, you're suspended.

I'm sure your parents will call.

It's fine, but you are suspended.

You get a zero.

I'll see you on Monday."

And as they're leaving the classroom, he says, "But hold your heads up because you did the right thing.

But sometimes doing the right thing has consequences."

I had to then sit down and for the rest of the class, I had to sort of wallow in my cowardice.

And in that moment, I made a decision to, you know, to save the fish every day.

It's a thing I think about once a week, probably, you know, like, am I -- am I willing to go the extra mile?

Am I willing to throw my body at a thing, throw my mind at a thing, throw my voice at something that could be -- that might not be beneficial for me, but for the betterment of our children, for the betterment of our elders, right, for the betterment of somebody who's less fortunate?

Right?

Do I have it in me?

Um, and every day I check myself to make sure that I do.

And that's all because of what I was taught in that class.

-You got introduced to poetry through music.

Run me through that.

-Yeah.

That seventh grade year.

Right?

As life is turning upside down.

Pop is -- Mom and Pop are splitting.

Grandma's dying and eventually does die.

And then I am forced to reckon with, um, the sounds of my mother crying, right?

What a strange thing.

We talked about sounds, this idea around the soundscape.

It's a thing that has stuck with me for 30 years, you know?

Um, because it was the first time.

And I think that anybody who's ever seen or heard their mother crying like the first time is a wild experience because this is your giant, right?

You only know them as -- in a particular way.

And I needed to figure out a way to make her feel better.

I couldn't live with knowing that she was in pain and I couldn't do anything about it.

So just before this, I saved up my money.

And I buy Queen Latifah's "Black Reign."

Um, this is the album with "U.N.I.T.Y."

on it, you know, "Weekend Love," classic.

And I read those lyrics and those liner notes and I realized that this was poetry.

I realized that, you know, I'm reciting "I, Too" in class, right?

I am the darker brother, right?

Langston Hughes.

And you realize that like, oh, this is the same thing, right?

Looks the same, right?

It may sound a little different, but this is the same thing.

Perhaps all these rappers are writing poetry.

Perhaps if I look at all the words, I can see it differently.

And that's how I was introduced to poetry.

So then Grandma dies, Mom is crying, and I do the only thing I know to do at that time, which is to write a few words, not a rap.

Just trying to do -- Just trying to figure out how to write something that makes me feel the way Queen Latifah makes me feel, or the way Tupac makes me feel, or Slick Rick makes me feel to make my mother feel a little better, right?

People got to see that.

My family got to see that and got to engage with it and then let me know how they felt like, oh, man, this really made me feel better.

Oh, man, those words you said that you wrote really made me feel something.

And then, you know, as a young person like, oh, wait, you mean to tell me that I have power?

That's it.

That's all I needed, right?

I have power because I have language, and language has power.

And now that I know that, uh, you know, I can -- I can wield this sword and shield in a very different way.

-I'm curious, why do you write?

-For a lot of reasons, you know.

I think I write to try to understand myself.

You know, I think that's why I started, just trying to figure out where do you put it.

You know, I think you go through -- you go through life.

The biggest misconception is that -- is that we walk through life, um, in -- in -- in sort of slickers.

And what I mean by that is as if nothing kind of sticks to us.

And the truth is everything does.

Everybody sticks.

Every experience sticks.

It all sticks.

It may not be top of mind, right?

But it all lives in your subconscious.

Every person you meet, every conversation you have, right?

Every story you hear, every time someone tells you a secret or confides in you, right?

It's all in your body, you know?

And I was trying to figure out as a young person where to put it.

I got to get it out of my body, right?

I don't have the capacity to hold it all.

And I'm an anxious child at that point.

Right?

And I don't have the capacity to carry all of this.

I don't have -- Right?

My body is filling up.

Right?

My mind is filling up.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to manage.

And so it came at the right time, and it gave me an opportunity to sort of excavate and exercise some of my thoughts and feelings, which we all need.

Right?

That's the first reason.

I still do it for that reason.

The second reason, though, is because I think I also realized that I am of service.

My mother taught us that as kids, that, like, everybody's purpose in life is the same, and that is to be of service to your fellow man.

The tricky part is everybody's vehicle is different.

And I found my vehicle and because I found my vehicle of service, then I -- then I do my job because it is what I am meant to do, right?

My job is to make somebody else's life a little better.

My job is to leave the world a little better than it was when I got here, and the way that I choose to do that, or the way that it's been -- that it's sort of come unto me is through this, through storytelling, through language, through -- through -- through whatever sort of, you know, iteration of wordplay.

Um, I know what it's for.

It's not -- It's not for, you know -- I take it very seriously.

I think there's too much power to play around with it.

Um, at the same time, I think that in the playing of it all, you discover new things and new powers.

Right?

But it's too important to take lightly.

It's too powerful to take lightly.

I think people are a little -- a little -- a little cavalier about language.

And the truth of the matter is, as far as I'm concerned, it's almost like casting spells.

Right?

And not in a sort of woo-woo sense.

Right?

But just in the sense that like, yo, whatever you say and whatever you write could very well -- teachers know this better than anybody -- could very well turn a child into a giant or turn that child into an ant.

Right?

All based on what you say.

Right?

What you say, the words that you formulated.

And so I know that going into it.

And so I think about all those things.

And now I think it's just -- it's my lot.

My lot in life is to be of service.

This just happens to be the vehicle.

And when I feel like my time is up, the writing will continue.

The profession may change, but the writing will always be the way that I just try to learn myself, try to understand the world around me.

Um, you know, it's a life-saver.

It saved my life in a real way.

-Your classification of the types of books that you write fall under young adult fiction.

How are you able to connect with your young readers?

-That's a good question, you know.

I think -- I think what it has to do with is my mother and father acknowledging the fact that I was a person even as a child, and they modeled that.

I bring home a C, my father takes me at the table.

"Listen, kid, did you try your best?

Tell me the truth."

Right?

"I just want you to tell me the truth.

Right?

Don't lie to yourself.

So tell me the truth.

Did you try your best?"

Sometimes I'd say yes.

Sometimes I'd say no, depending upon the truth.

Right?

And if I would say no, he would say, "Well, since you didn't try your best, there has to be some sort of discipline.

We have to have some sort of punishment here.

And, you know, you have to hold you accountable.

Right?

And so we need to figure out what ways are we going to make sure that, like, you understand that it is -- The C doesn't bother me.

You letting yourself down, you not pushing yourself to do your very best, it's something that is unacceptable because life is coming, right, and you can't let you down.

You don't have to get an A, but you always have to put your best foot forward, right?"

And in the moments where I said I did do my best, he would say, "Let's work a little harder next time.

Good job.

We'll just work a little harder next time."

That's it.

Right?

That's a very different way to sort of like -- Instead of being like, "An A is the only way," It was sort of like, "Let me talk to my kid and figure out where he is."

Right?

My mother too.

Right?

How you feeling?

I'm mad about this.

I'm upset about this.

You said this to me.

You hurt my feelings, and I just don't think I deserved it.

My mother was never the type to be like, "I say what I want to you because you're my child," right?

My mom was like, "Oh, if I hurt your feelings, I apologize.

I meant what I said, though.

I meant what I said, you know.

When you wrong, you wrong."

But at the same time, she could own that, like, perhaps she went too far.

So when I sit down at the page, I'm looking at these young people as people, right?

When I go and see them at the schools and the libraries and in the community centers and all the other places, the one thing they say to me most often is, "Man, thanks for just talking to us like people."

Right?

"Kid" to them is pejorative, right?

Because to them they're saying like, man, you know, they always remind us that our brains aren't developed.

Imagine what it feels like to be a kid and people would look at you and say like, "You don't know how you feel because your brain ain't developed."

Meanwhile, the child is like, "But I do know how I feel and I'm telling you.

I'm even vocalizing to you how I feel.

And what you keep saying is, 'No, you're not sad.

You're just hungry.'"

There is nothing more frustrating than being dismissed that way.

And adults know that more than anybody.

And yet we do it to these young folks, right?

And my job is to say like, I'm never going to do that.

I can't.

If you feel it, I know you feel it.

And I'm going to write it in the book, right?

I'm not going to dismiss your feelings or your experiences.

I'm not going to dismiss even some of the confusion that does exist in your brain.

All of that's still very real, right?

That exists in your body, and it could cause some anxiety.

It can cause mistake making.

It can cause all sorts of things.

So let me honor that by putting it on the page in a way that my parents honored it by allowing me to sit at the table and have some discourse without just assuming they knew everything about me.

Right?

They asked me, "Tell me what's going on, and then we'll adjust accordingly."

Um, that's all.

I think it comes from them.

-You wrote a book, "All American Boys," with Brandon Kiely that was banned.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Why was it banned?

-The one-liner is Rashad and Quinn, a Black boy and a white boy growing up in the very same neighborhood, they go to the same school and they even have the same set of friends, but they do not know each other, and on a Friday night, Rashad is accused of stealing in a grocery store and is abused by a police officer.

And Quinn witnesses it and knows the cop as his father figure.

And then he sets off on these two weeks where the two of them are trying to reckon with this experience.

Right?

That book was banned because nobody wants to ever talk about police officers in any way that isn't sort of like these are the greatest human beings in the world, as if they're not human beings.

And furthermore, nobody wants to complicate the argument, right?

It's not -- We're not even saying like this book is about how this cop was a good man to this boy and did a bad thing.

So then the question becomes, who is the -- who is he in this space?

And how do we grapple?

Right?

It's -- And Rashad has a police officer -- a former cop father who has also done a bad thing.

It is not to say that we are -- You know, I think people -- Listen.

I think we live in a country that unfortunately has become anti-intellectual, perhaps because we're not reading anymore.

Uh, and I think that the easiest thing to do for all of us is to simplify our arguments when what's necessary is for us to constantly be complicating our arguments.

Right?

And this book works to help complicate the argument, uh, while also bringing light to the fact that, like, police abuse is a real thing.

Always has been a real thing, by the way.

It's not a new phenomenon, always has been a real thing.

And it's affecting a lot of people every day in this country.

Um that's it.

I mean, that's it, right?

I think for parents in a lot of places, like, we don't want our kids to see Officer Friendly as anything other than Officer Friendly.

And it's like, well, I think the real question is, do your children know that Officer Friendly is a human being?

And if he is a human being, that means that he comes with all the things that human beings come with.

The only difference is he's been given an outsized amount of authority.

So he has all the same mess that we have.

And a gun and a badge.

That's it, which complicates all of our relationships around it.

Right?

And we should probably okay with -- be okay or get okay with engaging and having discourse around what that actually means and what that looks like down the line.

That's it, man.

But you know.

-For an artist who's poured his work into a book, how does it feel for someone to not discredit it but in a sense, yeah, by banning it in certain industries?

-It feels disrespectful to the kids, right?

It hurts my feelings.

But it's disrespect to the children.

It hurts my feelings because it makes me feel like people think that I'm out here trying to harm children.

Um, but I think it's disrespectful because what it says is, is that adults actually don't respect the intellectual capacity of young people as if they don't already know, as if they're not already having these conversations.

They have the Internet, right?

They have -- Like, that's my -- That's the part that I'm most confused about.

I'm like, you do know that they -- that they are already wrestling with this?

That's like saying like, don't write a book about gun violence.

Don't write a book about school shootings.

Right?

You do know they do school shooter drills.

So I don't know why this would be a complicated conversation.

Like, don't write a book about sex.

You do know there are -- there are people being pregnant in their schools now.

You do know they're having sex, right?

Anyone who believes that the teenagers are not having sex, it's like, I don't know.

We are -- This is a human experience.

This is a human experience.

I'm just trying to create a place for them to land so that they understand what it is that's happening to them, what's happening around them.

That is our actual jobs, right?

My job isn't to be the captain of the ship.

My job is to be the lighthouse.

Right?

I'm not -- I'm not trying to man nobody's boat.

That's for them.

It's their lives.

My job is to point in the direction that is safe, that that way is the journey, right?

We're going this way.

But not to teach you, not to tell you how to row.

That's on you, right?

And that to me, that's what our job is, to teach them which way to go, but not to teach them how to go there.

You know what I mean?

You know, everybody's afraid of it.

And I get all kinds of nasty comments and it is what it is, man.

I'll tell you what -- I'll tell you what I'm most exhausted about.

I have to talk about this all the time.

And what I would rather put my energy in is talking about all these librarians and teachers who are fighting on the other side, who are putting their lives at risk, their jobs at risk every day to make sure that books like mine stay in the bookstore, stay in the library and stay in the schools.

They really are the ones who deserve to be sitting in front of this camera and telling you what's really going on, man.

I'm going back to my ivory tower so I can be an artist.

But there are real lives, real human beings who are not famous, who are fighting on behalf of our children every day.

-Why is storytelling important?

-Storytelling is important because as far as I'm concerned, this is -- this is the -- the most valuable of the human technologies.

This is the most human thing we have to offer one another to be better.

Human beings are most influential to other human beings.

Nothing influences us more than each other.

And so the more we share our stories, the more whole we will be collectively.

And we'll realize that we're not actually that different.

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